research: pen – coffee – paper

“Part of this aspect of research which is analogous to taking a route across many terrains is about going to something without going to do the thing it’s there for, like going to the library without reading books. Of course that’s the most literal, kind of negative aspect of research, but one component of art as research has to do with not using a pen to stir your coffee with but looking at the relationships between the pen and the coffee and the hierarchy between the pen and the coffee and the piece of paper or something odd, and then maybe going to thinking about where the pen is made. And, you see, it starts to generate connections that either evade standard, sort of rationalized forms of exchange or add to new ones that people hadn’t really noticed before, and that the generalized kinds of forms of exchange in society can’t be bothered to finance.”